Apology

This project is at best a splendid failure. Realistically: how could it be a success?

‘Hey, we’re sorry’, say the humans to one another, and to an injured planet.

Yeah, as if.

Our work is made up of apologies, faux-pologies, cris-de-coeur, misguided apologies, desperate calls for forgiveness, refusals to apologize, simple settling of scores, strategic gains being made with an enemy, deathbed confessions. Imagined apologies. Oblique and veiled apologies. Fantasy apologies. Reveries.

And yet always an apologia as well, a defense of something: not affirming anthropocentrism, but of what humans might become by dropping the illusion of supremacy.

Other-than-human, more-than-human, inhuman.

What does this mean in performance? What can performance do to achieve this?

We’re striving to work across time, with durational performance and a kind of ‘effort art’ (or, if you prefer, ‘affective athleticism’).
We’re practicing open-ended exploration co-lead by people with different expertise and passions.
We’re including ritual, dreams, and subtle energy practice in our work.
We’re communicating with ancestry and seeking guidance.
We’re exploring non-traditional performers and non-traditional audiences, including other-than-human entities & materials.
We’re theorizing the idea of the ‘performance acommons’ as a kind of relational connection across performance worlds.

Oh, yes, and we’re sorry:

(Trigger Warning. Everyone. Here and now.)

We’re sorry. We are: sorry.

Sincerely and thoroughly. Genuinely sorry.

Sincerely,
thoroughly
genuinely
deeply
thoroughly, sincerely... Uh.

We’re sorry.

Considering human nature, such as it is, and the nature of humans Much of this, much of what follows, will be triggering: Triggering experience
Pretty much all of it actually:

The world is a minefield of triggers

We’re glad that the zeitgeist has finally decided
to deliver some consequences
some payback to abusive people:
It’s been a rough couple of hundred thousand years or so if you’re a survivor.

We get that people are trying to be supportive. We’re glad we’re finally talking about .... All this. And yet

And I’m still not able to sleep without grinding my teeth to dust. And all of us here have more trauma than we would like to admit Or even know